At long last, we finally get down to some Real Talk about Python 3. In
this episode, Mike and Dave are joined by guests Nick
Coghlan and Alex Gaynor; our discussion gets into the history of
Python 3's development, why it's compelling, whether it's a failure, and more.
We also chat for a bit about Alex's new Cryptography library and the
downfall of "abstinence-only" crypto education.

All this plus some news and the return of the return of Python trivia! Read on
for some additional thoughts as well as a plethora of links for this episode.

First of all, we'd like to apologize for the delay. We had almost managed to
settle into an every-other-month cadence when we were stricken with scheduling
conflicts and the unexpected death of our editing platform. (And oh, how the
sadhorns did play!) Work and pre-PyCon complications followed.

Secondly, a heads up--though we're trying to improve the audio quality (Dave
has a microphone now!), Google Hangout seems to have betrayed us, introducing
mystery pops and clicks that have thus far resisted our attempts to scrub them
out in post. For some reason they seem to only affect one segment of the
recording, so please bear with it for a couple minutes--the main interview
portion of the episode is click-free. We're very sorry, and all we can do
about it at this point is to promise that we'll keep working on it.

While we were fighting through all of the above, Python 3.4 was released, and
it's really exciting because it has seriously cool things that we
somehow failed to discuss at all during our recording session a couple weeks
prior (though we may have mentioned some highlights last time).

At long last, we finally get down to some Real Talk about Python 3. In
this episode, Mike and Dave are joined by guests Nick
Coghlan and Alex Gaynor; our discussion gets into the history of
Python 3's development, why it's compelling, whether it's a failure, and more.
We also chat for a bit about Alex's new Cryptography library and the
downfall of "abstinence-only" crypto education.

All this plus some news and the return of the return of Python trivia! Read on
for some additional thoughts as well as a plethora of links for this episode.

At long last, we finally get down to some Real Talk about Python 3. In this episode, Mike and Dave are joined by guests Nick Coghlan and Alex Gaynor; our discussion gets into the history of Python 3's development, why it's compelling, whether it's a failure, and more. We also chat for a bit about Alex's new Cryptography library and the downfall of "abstinence-only" crypto education. All this plus some news and the return of the return of Python trivia! Read on for some additional thoughts as well as a plethora of links for this episode. First of all, we'd like to apologize for the delay. We had almost managed to settle into an every-other-month cadence when we were stricken with scheduling conflicts and the unexpected death of our editing platform. (And oh, how the sadhorns did play!) Work and pre-PyCon complications followed. Secondly, a heads up--though we're trying to improve the audio quality (Dave has a microphone now!), Google Hangout seems to have betrayed us, introducing ...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:12:04Are You There, Internet?http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2014/03/06/are-you-there-internet
Mike PirnatThu, 06 Mar 2014 22:00:00 ESThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2014/03/06/are-you-there-internetAre You There, Internet?Are you there, Internet? It's me, @__fpip__.

How are you? Doing okay? Made it through the holidays all right? Surviving
the onslaught of polar vortices? Ready to be done with winter (or whatever
season it is for you right now)? Are you excited for PyCon yet?

Yeah, us too.

We just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know we haven't forgotten
about you. We had some scheduling issues that messed up our emerging
every-other-month cadence, and the machine that we use for editing the show
decided to go to the big computer store in the sky.

Though we are delayed, we are undaunted; in fact, we just recorded a new
episode a couple days ago that we hope to release in the next week or so (once
our hardware issues are resolved).

We've heard your feedback as well and have been taking steps to improve the
quality of our audio. We won't promise perfection, but we will pledge to
iteratively improve. (And honestly, even though the Hangout recordings aren't
the greatest, we think they're a huge improvement over some of the shows from a
couple years ago in echoey conference rooms or bar basements. YMMV, of course.)

Can you do us a favor? One thing that happened last year when we had hosting
problems was that we fell out of the iTunes store and had to set everything up
all over again, which means we lost all of our ratings and reviews, as well as
our subscription base. So we'd really love it if you could pop on over to
iTunes and give us some ratings and reviews (and heck, why not
subscribe while you're there?).

Thanks; you're super.

Have you got a particular topic you're interested in hearing about? Have
something else we should know about? Drop us a line via Twitter or on
our site's contact form and let us know! Or say hi to Mike at
PyCon and we can hang out.

So... That should cover everything for now. We'll talk again soon. Until
then, take care. Be excellent to each other, and Python on.

All this plus cookies, news, the return of Python trivia, and lots of things to
link to!

In this episode, we're pleased to catch up with the one, the only, the real Katie Cunningham to catch up on some great stuff that she's been up to. We chat about the Young Coders tutorial (which you can totally contribute to or help scale), her Python article for Hour of Code, being good to students who run Windows, her brand-new book Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours, and the Python 2–Python 3 divide. We also check in on the state of accessibility (which we last talked about way back in episode 10) and discover that there's a book for that too. All this plus cookies, news, the return of Python trivia, and lots of things to link to! We hear you like links, so please accept these as a token of our appreciation: Django 1.6.1 is out, with new hotness The Django blog is starting up Django Update posts again Python 3.4 has a beta with lots of cool new toys PyCon 2014 is coming in April! It's in Canada, so previously-privileged American travelers need to get passports! FPIP hosts Mik...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:47:33Episode 015: An Evening with Jesse Nollerhttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/10/31/episode-015-an-evening-with-jesse-noller
Mike PirnatThu, 31 Oct 2013 01:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/10/31/episode-015-an-evening-with-jesse-nollerEpisode 015: An Evening with Jesse Noller

By popular demand, From Python Import Podcast returns from the dead with a
brand-new, supersized episode of epicness featuring an in-depth conversation
with Jesee Noller, PSF board member, core developer, chair of PyCon
2012 and 2013, and all-around hoopy frood.
Over the course of nearly two hours, we get an inside look at the Python
Software Foundation, being a core developer, bringing a code of
conduct to the Python community, community outreach and diversity, the
joys and anguish of running a major conference, how to get involved in Python
or PyCon, the work he's doing with Rackspace to inspire developers
to build cool things, some Python trivia, and various strategies for discovering
and curating collections of animated GIFs.

We'd not only like to thank Jesse for his time and candor, but we'd also like
to thank each and every one of you for listening, for subscribing, for tweeting,
for saying hello at conferences, for encouraging us to create new episodes
again. Every little bit, every interaction--no matter how trivial it might
seem--matters. You made this episode happen, and hopefully many more to come.
Thank you.

By popular demand, From Python Import Podcast returns from the dead with a
brand-new, supersized episode of epicness featuring an in-depth conversation
with Jesee Noller, PSF board member, core developer, chair of PyCon
2012 and 2013, and all-around hoopy frood.
Over the course of nearly two hours, we get an inside look at the Python
Software Foundation, being a core developer, bringing a code of
conduct to the Python community, community outreach and diversity, the
joys and anguish of running a major conference, how to get involved in Python
or PyCon, the work he's doing with Rackspace to inspire developers
to build cool things, some Python trivia, and various strategies for discovering
and curating collections of animated GIFs.

We'd not only like to thank Jesse for his time and candor, but we'd also like
to thank each and every one of you for listening, for subscribing, for tweeting,
for saying hello at conferences, for encouraging us to create new episodes
again. Every little bit, every interaction--no matter how trivial it might
seem--matters. You made this episode happen, and hopefully many more to come.
Thank you.

By popular demand, From Python Import Podcast returns from the dead with a brand-new, supersized episode of epicness featuring an in-depth conversation with Jesee Noller, PSF board member, core developer, chair of PyCon 2012 and 2013, and all-around hoopy frood. Over the course of nearly two hours, we get an inside look at the Python Software Foundation, being a core developer, bringing a code of conduct to the Python community, community outreach and diversity, the joys and anguish of running a major conference, how to get involved in Python or PyCon, the work he's doing with Rackspace to inspire developers to build cool things, some Python trivia, and various strategies for discovering and curating collections of animated GIFs. We'd not only like to thank Jesse for his time and candor, but we'd also like to thank each and every one of you for listening, for subscribing, for tweeting, for saying hello at conferences, for encouraging us to create new episodes again. Every little bit, ...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:50:13A Rackspace Odysseyhttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/09/09/a-rackspace-odyssey
Mike PirnatMon, 09 Sep 2013 14:24:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/09/09/a-rackspace-odysseyA Rackspace Odyssey

This is going to be a lot longer than the things we usually post; buckle up.

One of our obstacles in recording and releasing new episodes has been some
hosting issues that resulted from a server relocation that never quite put
everything back in place correctly, and the people who could fix them were those
of us who had the least amount of time to do so. I'd been thinking for some
time about moving the site to a hosting solution that wouldn't result in those
kinds of bottlenecks any more, so when Rackspace community advocate
Jesse Noller started announcing free accounts for open
source and community projects this summer, I jumped at the chance to shake
things up.

I'm very pleased to announce that we've now fully migrated over to the new
setup, and so far things are pretty darn good.

Full disclosure time--in exchange for getting the awesome hookup, we've been
asked to:

Link to Rackspace on the site (you'll see some bling in the sidebar and
footer now)

As I got our new setup going, I took extensive, stream-of-consciousness notes so
that I could capture everything that I was thinking and feeling. I'm going to
spare you from them and instead attempt to boil it all down into what I found to
be the positive and negative experiences of getting everything working.

Account Creation & Initial Experience

Creating an account was pretty straightforward. The only thing I struggled with
was coming up with a username that fit the requirement of being more than six
characters (I had intended to use "fpip", our short abbreviation for "From
Python Import Podcast"). Rackspace sent some really good follow-up emails as
the account was created that helped me want to start doing things right away.
The welcome videos were a nice high point as well; more companies--in any
market--should provide this kind of high-level tour of their products.

However, the quick start guide linked to from one of the welcome emails was a
disappointment--the knowledge center article it brought me to was pretty
minimal, mostly containing links to things that didn't feel very quick startish
to me: info about support levels, about monitoring service, about patching, and
a video about creating a server with a managed service level. That's all either
really dry, not what I'm looking for, or not applicable to our unmanaged
account. For me, a quick start guide should be a "here's how you Rackspace for
dummies" sort of thing.

Creating a Server

So, instead of reading the quick start that wasn't, I just jumped in and made a
server. The control panel web interface makes this super-easy, offering a ton
of different starting images and memory/storage combinations. This interface
also lets you choose a region for your image to live in (basically, which data
center it will be hosted in). Since I'm in the US, the choice of the DC area,
Dallas, or Chicago didn't make a lot of difference to me (Sydney might be
important if you're outside the US), but the most important advice is that you
aren't going to get charged for data for chatter between boxes that are inside
the same region, but will be charged for data that crosses from one region to
another, so you want to keep all the things that will communicate all in the
same region.

One nice thing about the control panel interface is that any time you're going
to go do things, you'll get some extra context with helpful text and links to
offer how-tos and advice. This is a great feature that again I'd like to see
other people implement. I especially liked that the server creation came with
guidance for logging in and getting at least a basic level of security going.
However, the knowledge center articles that are linked again don't always
contain all the information that one might expect them to, which in some cases
left me scrambling to fill in the blanks. The basic security documentation, for
example, does a great job of going through things in a n00b-friendly,
step-by-step way, only to completely omit the explanation of how to set up
iptables rules. Since I've been out of the amateur sysadmin game for at least a
decade, the "create /etc/iptables.test.rules and add some rules" instruction
left me feeling really stupid and more than a little annoyed.

That said, I did have a shiny, fresh Ubuntu box in just a few short moments,
and I was able to quickly get the basics (git, make, nginx, etc.) installed and
running.

Cloud Files & CDN

I could have just uploaded all of our audio files to the new server and call it
done, but Rackspace offers a cloud storage solution similar to Amazon's S3, and
makes it trivial to provide public access to it via Akamai's content
distribution network. CDNs rule for publishing big, static content like audio
and video, making them quickly and redundantly available around the world, so I
definitely wanted to take advantage of this.

The control panel again makes it trivial to create a container for your files.
Once the container has been created, you can use the web interface to upload
files, or use Cyberduck. I started by using the web interface, but
came to deeply regret it:

It quickly saturated my upstream bandwidth, leading to significant spousal
disapproval while I pushed up a couple GB of audio files.

There's no progress bar, so I had to open and periodically refresh a second
window to keep track of my progress.

There's also no indicator of which file is being uploaded, so it's a good
idea to only upload one at a time.

"Use Cyberduck" is much better advice, and it turned out to be a lot easier to
set up than I had expected. I had expected "use Cyberduck" to link to a
knowledge center article about its use or configuration, and instead it just
links to the Cyberduck site. Fortunately, Cyberduck is already hip to Rackspace
Cloud Files and just needs your username and API key.

I enabled logging (since I want to be able to count downloads of our episodes)
and time-to-live values very easily through the web interface, but I ran into a
couple of interesting gotchas with the CDN stuff. First, the hints around
turning on logging suggest that your logs will go into a magical .ACCESS_LOGS
container that suddenly appears once you have some log data... and they do, but
those are the access logs from using the private file storage interface (through
the website and the API), not the logs from the CDN that represent the public
downloads of our files. Those go into an even more magical .CDN_ACCESS_LOGS
container that appears sometime around 24 hours after you first start accessing
your files via the CDN. Not huge, but kind of an expectation management goof.

The bigger issue that I ran into was that the MIME types of files are detected
when you first upload them, and there doesn't seem to be any way to change them.
In practical terms, this means that my .ogg audio files had gotten detected as
"audio/mpeg" and wouldn't play in HTML5 audio tags in Firefox on the Mac (which
wants them to be "audio/ogg"). The web interface and the API allow you to set
additional headers for metadata, but you can't edit the Content-Type at all.
Cyberduck thinks you can set a custom Content-Type, but it ends up coming out
of the CDN as a "X-Object-Meta-Content-Type" which is totally not useful. I
briefly tried renaming files from .ogg to .oga in both Cyberduck and the web
interface in the hopes that changing the extension would cause the MIME type to
be re-detected; when that failed I was forced to reupload all of our ogg audio
with .oga extensions. This is probably the single worst annoyance of my
overall Rackspace experience; but now I know, and knowing is half the
battle.

DNS

Since we're trying to reduce the bus factor involved in running FPIP, I
was really excited to take advantage of Rackspace's DNS capabilities. They
offer both a web interface and API hooks in case you like to write custom
clients or need to manage DNS programmatically. Like a good boy should, I tried
starting with documentation but found it pretty lacking--there's some very
high-level marketing fluff, and then the main documentation is about the API.
What I really wanted was somewhere in between, so that I'd know what I was
getting into and at what point in the process I would start creating unintended
consequences.

In the end, I just forged ahead and found that the actual experience of using
the web interface was much simpler than I expected. My biggest concern was that
the first "create domain" would cause untold horrors to unfurl across the
universe of domain name servers turned out to be completely unfounded; it's just
a placeholder until you start adding records, and even then it won't matter
until you use your registrar's interface to use Rackspace's DNS servers for your
domain. Once you've done the "create domain" step, adding and editing records
is pretty straightforward, and I was able to quickly duplicate our existing A,
CNAME, MX, and TXT records.

I like that the sidebar help links include information on SPF and
DKIM, though it wasn't really relevant to us (we're not exactly in the
business of email deliverability). I also like that in the web interface, TTLs
can be specified in either seconds or minutes.

Sending Email

Speaking of sending email, I think it's kind of cool that Rackspace users get a
free Mailgun account, which would make sending modest volumes of
email really easy and reliable. My needs--the back end of a contact form that
mostly just gets spam in languages I can't read--didn't justify plugging into
Mailgun, so I just installed Postfix and got on with it.

Backups & Monitoring

Once you've got everything Just Right, it's super-easy to take a backup image of
your server that you can use to restore from or create new servers as you need.
This is pretty great as it allows you to quickly create additional servers from
the same mold if you need to scale things out horizontally. You can even
automate the creation of images to back up servers regularly.

The web interface also makes it really easy to set up monitoring on your
servers, allowing you to be automatically notified if your site isn't up, or
you're running into load or diskspace problems, etc. This comes at a small
incremental cost per check, but I appreciate the peace of mind. Of course, we
aren't running hundreds of servers so your mileage may vary.

API

I've mentioned the API a few times now, so let's finally talk about it.
Rackspace provides a comprehensive API for manipulating their services. As far
as I can tell, with the API you can do everything the web control panel can do
(and probably more). If you like writing RESTful API client code, you can do
that; if not, Rackspace provides wrappers in a variety of languages. Obviously,
I chose to mess with Pyrax, the Python implementation.

My goal was to write a script to pull down CDN logs so that I can continue to
track downloads of our shows.

After making a virtualenv and pip installing Pyrax, I set down to absorb the
documentation, only to find that the "getting started" link was incorrect. I
notified folks at Rackspace and I expect this is already fixed or will be soon.
I obtained my API key (almost but not quite where the docs say to look, I
believe due to updates to the web interface). I found further frustration in
the process of trying to authenticate and start using the API--the documentation
and examples are really unclear and confusing and need a serious rewrite to
clean them up for human-friendliness. Here's my little script
that hopefully clarifies the process of authenticating and connecting. The high
points are:

Set the identity type using pyrax.set_setting

Plug into your credential file using pyrax.set_credential_file

Authenticate using pyrax.authenticate

Make a connection to a service--in my case, pyrax.connect_to_cloudfiles; be
sure to include the region!

Other than the initial auth frustration, I found the API decently documented,
with responsibilities clearly separated, and overall straightforward and
pleasant enough to work with that I'll consider exploring it further.

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, my Rackspace experience has been quite positive, and I'd recommend
checking them out to see if it's a good fit for what you want to do. I'd like
to sincerely thank Jesse and Rackspace for helping to breathe a little new life
into the podcast by giving us a chance to play with their toys.

There are some documentation issues that should be addressed--I know Rackspace
prides itself on its "fanatical support", but a DIYer like myself doesn't want
to have to contact support to sort out things that refreshed or improved
documentation would make trivial. And I'd like to see just a little more
control in the Cloud Files stuff.

Now that we're all set up, I'm excited to be preparing some new episodes to be
released this fall. Stay tuned!

]]>Not Quite Dead Yethttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/07/30/not-quite-dead-yet
Mike PirnatTue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/07/30/not-quite-dead-yetNot Quite Dead YetGosh, it's been a year since we launched the new site at PyOhio, and
nearly that much time since we released a new episode.

But then PyOhio 2013 happened, and we kept bumping into people who gushed about
the podcast and rekindled feelings in the deep, dark depths of our hearts that
we thought had long since burned to ash and scattered to the winds. So maybe,
just maybe, it might be worth another go, to see if we can start doing this
in a way that's sustainable, or at least somewhat compatible with all of our
other competing interests and schedules.

We could try to summarize the conversation here, but it frankly wouldn't
do it justice. This is a great conversation between some bright guys, and
it was a ton of fun to bring them all together. The links above will get
you started, but you are best served to listen and simply enjoy.

We could try to summarize the conversation here, but it frankly wouldn't
do it justice. This is a great conversation between some bright guys, and
it was a ton of fun to bring them all together. The links above will get
you started, but you are best served to listen and simply enjoy.

In the latest exciting episode of From Python Import Podcast, we had the pleasure of sitting down with James Tauber (Pinax, Eldarion), Kenneth Reitz (Requests, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python, Tablib), and Chad Whitacre (Gittip, Aspen) for an end-of-conference chat at PyOhio 2012. We could try to summarize the conversation here, but it frankly wouldn't do it justice. This is a great conversation between some bright guys, and it was a ton of fun to bring them all together. The links above will get you started, but you are best served to listen and simply enjoy. Some linkable things we discussed include: GHeat Habitualist Gondor If This Then That Aspen Flask Brainfuck Whitespace Apple II Emulator (ApplePy) MytechneMike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:22:17Episode 013: PyOhio 2012http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/08/24/episode-013-pyohio-2012
Chris MillerFri, 24 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/08/24/episode-013-pyohio-2012Episode 013: PyOhio 2012This episode, recorded at PyOhio 2012, features an interview with Catherine Devlin, Eric Floehr, and Brian Costlow about the history and development of the regional conference. Notes follow:

Introductions all around. Gladhanding. Bona fides. Poledancing (Not).

The history of PyOhio: "This one time, at PyCon..."

Fortune favored the bold...let's make a conference!

Columbus was chosen because iot was between everyone. Look at a map. It really is.

The AV staff is a bunch of steely-eyed missle men...and women. They rock. All the talks are on Blip.tv and PyVideo.

Year one had 80 people. Year 5 - over 200.

Did we mention that PyOhio is free? It is. And it is the People's Conference. But in a good way. Not in a creepy propaganda-poster kind of way.

The bulk of the funds to run the con is from the sponsors and donations.

A person can help by Volunteering. Platespinners, catherders, and co-chairs welcome.

There is an Expanded Mission. But you're going to have to listen. I'm not telling you what it is. Nyah.

Ok. I Lied. PyOhio wants to get into teaching the youth and other folks new to Python, "Day Of Python" events.

People come from all over the country to PyOhio. It is at destination, nay, a PILGRIMAGE.

PyOhio has just become a Non-Profit Organization in the State of Ohio. Federal 501.3(c) coming soon.

There is a lot of useful info about how to become a non-profit detailed in the show, but show notes cannot do it justice. You must listen. Really.

It would be awesome for Ohio to be a Python talent hotbed. Stop the brain-drain to the coasts.

PYOHIO WILL BE THE WOODSTOCK OF PYTHON. With less drugs. Cause, you know. That's just wrong. And stuff.

The campaign to get PyCon to Ohio has begun. Plans within plans. Oh yes. Plans within plans.

Eric spoke on processing a million images to find "interesting things" in the night sky. Wound up finding fascinating data about the path of the year, the tracks of the planets in the sky, and how the length of the day changes throughout the year.

]]>NoneThis episode, recorded at PyOhio 2012, features an interview with Catherine Devlin, Eric Floehr, and Brian Costlow about the history and development of the regional conference. Notes follow: Introductions all around. Gladhanding. Bona fides. Poledancing (Not). The history of PyOhio: "This one time, at PyCon..." Fortune favored the bold...let's make a conference! Columbus was chosen because iot was between everyone. Look at a map. It really is. The AV staff is a bunch of steely-eyed missle men...and women. They rock. All the talks are on Blip.tv and PyVideo. Year one had 80 people. Year 5 - over 200. Did we mention that PyOhio is free? It is. And it is the People's Conference. But in a good way. Not in a creepy propaganda-poster kind of way. The bulk of the funds to run the con is from the sponsors and donations. A person can help by Volunteering. Platespinners, catherders, and co-chairs welcome. There is an Expanded Mission. But you're going to have to listen. I'm not telling you what...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes36:05Shiny New Websitehttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/07/29/shiny-new-website
Mike PirnatSun, 29 Jul 2012 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/07/29/shiny-new-websiteShiny New WebsiteOne of the reasons that we've sucked about recording new content since
PyCon is that Mike has been
diligently tinkering away on a brand new design for the website.
We're pleased to announce that the new site is now live, just in time for
PyOhio lightning talks!

The new site features:

Spiffy HTML 5 audio tags for in-browser listening

Responsive design that looks great on your phone, tablet, or desktop

Finally incorporates album art design into the site

Contact form

Social network sharing buttons to help promote your favorite episodes

We'll probably still be messing with a few things and will add some features
that we didn't have time to get to in our mad dash to get live, so stay tuned.

If you had subscribed in iTunes, please check to make sure that's still going
on and resubscribe if need be; apparently we had a damaged feed a month or two
ago and fell out of the iTunes listings. (Yes, we know, this totally sucks and
we're idiots. No one feels worse about it than we do.)

On the plus side, now we can actually focus on maybe making a few new episodes.
Madness!

This is the last of our interviews from PyCon, so I guess that means we have to
get off our butts and make some more episodes happen. Don't panic--we don't
plan to disappear for a year again (though that wasn't really our plan to begin
with). In fact, with any luck, we should be recording at least one episode in
the next few days to help get us back on track.

]]>NoneIn this episode, we interview Jonathan LaCour, VP of Software Development at Dreamhost, about the cool things they're up to with Python and--dramatic chord--The Cloud. This is the last of our interviews from PyCon, so I guess that means we have to get off our butts and make some more episodes happen. Don't panic--we don't plan to disappear for a year again (though that wasn't really our plan to begin with). In fact, with any luck, we should be recording at least one episode in the next few days to help get us back on track.Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes22:10Episode 011: PyLadieshttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/06/01/episode-011-pyladies
Mike PirnatFri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/06/01/episode-011-pyladiesEpisode 011: PyLadiesIn this episode we interview Christine Cheung and
Sandy Strong of PyLadies
at PyCon 2012, get excited about what they're doing for the community and
diversity, lament the rise of the brogrammer, and pass judgment on modern Lego
kits.

]]>NoneIn this episode we interview Christine Cheung and Sandy Strong of PyLadies at PyCon 2012, get excited about what they're doing for the community and diversity, lament the rise of the brogrammer, and pass judgment on modern Lego kits.Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes25:26Episode 010: Katie Cunninghamhttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/05/06/episode-010-katie-cunningham
Mike CruteSun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/05/06/episode-010-katie-cunninghamEpisode 010: Katie Cunningham

What can we say about Katie? We met her at PyCon 2012 and, frankly, we were
starstruck. She's a woman of many talents...

]]>NoneWhat can we say about Katie? We met her at PyCon 2012 and, frankly, we were starstruck. She's a woman of many talents... She codes! She does things to the Internet! She blogs! She talks sometimes! She likes to hear from people! Most importantly, she's a pythonista and she agreed to talk with us. This is that talk. Enjoy!Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes42:29Episode 009: Is this thing still on?http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/03/20/episode-009-is-this-thing-still-on
Mike CruteTue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2012/03/20/episode-009-is-this-thing-still-onEpisode 009: Is this thing still on?

And, lo, we are returned from the void. From Python Import Podcast is back! In
this episode, we meet with Steve Holden, Chairman of the PSF and all around
swell guy. We discuss the history of PyCon and Python itself, explore the
evolution of a volunteer conference, get turndown service, and even a little
chocolate.

]]>NoneAnd, lo, we are returned from the void. From Python Import Podcast is back! In this episode, we meet with Steve Holden, Chairman of the PSF and all around swell guy. We discuss the history of PyCon and Python itself, explore the evolution of a volunteer conference, get turndown service, and even a little chocolate.Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes47:45Episode 008: PyCon/CodeMash Double Feature (Doctor X will Code a Feature)http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2011/03/17/episode-008-pycon-codemash-double-feature-doctor-x-will-code-a-feature
Mike PirnatThu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2011/03/17/episode-008-pycon-codemash-double-feature-doctor-x-will-code-a-featureEpisode 008: PyCon/CodeMash Double Feature (Doctor X will Code a Feature)

What do you mean it’s not February any more? Seriously?! Sigh. We know, we
know, we broke our promise again. Life happened–to all of us. We’ll do better
next time (Chris has a plan, you see.)

Luckily, the wait is over–we’re back, and with a whopper! Clocking in at a
mighty 106 minutes, this jumbo deluxe ultra fun-size epic includes our
reflections on recent conferences we’ve attended–January’s now-distant
CodeMash and March’s just-complete PyCon. Your hosts for this excursion down conference
memory lane, in counterclockwise order, are Chris Miller, Mike Pirnat, Ben
Smith, and Mike Crute.

Our CodeMash recap describes the conference, highlights memorable
presentations, and gives a little flavor of the night life (jam sessions and
pool parties and craziness, oh my!). The short version is that CodeMash is
awesome, and you should go. Seriously–it’s a polyglot conference! At an indoor
water park! In January! It is made of win.

But HOLY COW OMG PYCON!! Having just returned from our glorious adventures,
we are positively effervescent about what was probably the best PyCon ever.
Mike Pirnat is goaded gently into discussing his speaking experiences–giving
his official talk, Exhibition of Atrocity, mortally offending
Titus Brown at the Testing in Python Birds
of a Feather (aka the TiP
BoF), and announcing his side project, How Old Is My Kid?, at the lightning talks.

While at PyCon, we joined up with Rick Harding
of Lococast, Anthony Scopatz of scientific computing podcast inSCIght, testing goatherder and PyCon programming committee
guru Terry Peppers, and an atypically
quiet David Stanek to form a veritable Voltron of voices, recording a live
round table during the Sunday morning open spaces. We rofl our way through the
previous night’s TiP BoF exploits, and Terry gets Mike Pirnat to talk about
talking. Apologies for any duplication of content in here–it’s all due to
accidents with the time machine we’re working on to try to absorb all of the
excellent PyCon talks. (Please also forgive Mike Pirnat for hammering on his
laptop while recording–he’s very sorry and promises not to do it again.) We
rave about how well the Convore-driven backchannel worked out, get some
insights into the “Extreme” track and programming PyCon talks, and recall our
favorites presentations. We send mad, mad shout-outs of joy to the A/V team,
who had much of the conference video online before the conference even ended;
their work is a fabulous benefit to the Python community. Matt Gibberman and Eric Floehr join us for a few minutes to
discuss Eric’s talk on genetic programming.

In a special bonus segment, Rick and Mike Pirnat sit down with the intrepid
John DeRosa, whose epic cross-country bus ride
from Seattle to Atlanta with play-by-play Twitter commentary so captivated us. We talk about the why and
how of his journey and chat about memorable moments and human drama he
encountered along the way. Then we bring things into a full-circle, swirling
time loop vortex of doom and throw some love to CodeMash and encourage all
willing Pythonistas to help represent by submitting talks for next January’s
CodeMash.

We then pop back up the stack to wrap up the episode and bring it on home with
Chris Miller’s promises of a new episode in early April, by hook or by crook
(or perhaps by five-point plan).

We want to add that it was thoroughly awesome to meet up with fans and
listeners while we were at PyCon. Your passion and excitement for this podcast
really inspired us to hurry up and get this thing out there so that we can get
back on track. THANK YOU. YOU ROCK.

But wait–there’s more! Behold the miscellaneous links of wonderment and joy:

]]>NoneWhat do you mean it’s not February any more? Seriously?! Sigh. We know, we know, we broke our promise again. Life happened–to all of us. We’ll do better next time (Chris has a plan, you see.) Luckily, the wait is over–we’re back, and with a whopper! Clocking in at a mighty 106 minutes, this jumbo deluxe ultra fun-size epic includes our reflections on recent conferences we’ve attended–January’s now-distant CodeMash and March’s just-complete PyCon. Your hosts for this excursion down conference memory lane, in counterclockwise order, are Chris Miller, Mike Pirnat, Ben Smith, and Mike Crute. But first–NEWS! We get up to speed on the current haps in Blogofile, the upcoming PyWeek, PEP land, and the Python version control migration (from Subversion to Mercurial). Our CodeMash recap describes the conference, highlights memorable presentations, and gives a little flavor of the night life (jam sessions and pool parties and craziness, oh my!). The short version is that CodeMash is awesome, a...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:46:30Episode 007: Gary, With Beerhttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2011/01/12/episode-007-gary-with-beer
Chris MillerWed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 ESThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2011/01/12/episode-007-gary-with-beerEpisode 007: Gary, With Beer

...or “Make Your Own Episode Title, Since You’re So Clever; I’m Tired and
Going to Sleep Because Codemash Starts in Seven Hours”

Broadcasting from high atop the basement of the Buckeye Beer Engine, regular voices Chris Miller, Mike Pirnat,
David Stanek, Mike Crute, and Ben Smith are joined by Gary Bernhardt, renowned destroyer of software, for a
conversational journey through what’s on our minds this week. (Audiophiles
beware–thar be strange acoustics ahead!)

First, we begin with an apology for not releasing an episode in six months; we
make some excellent and terribly creative excuses, but still, we’re covered in
a thick layer of fail. Forgive us?

Getting down to business, we discuss WSGI2 and various issues around (what we
perceive to be) the current community furor over its development. Do you know
your PEP-3333 from your PEP-444? We try to sort it all out, and
why we either like or don’t like bits of it, all the while haunted by the
echoes of the room and the faint hints of bar music above. (Is that David
Bowie’s “Life on Mars” I hear?)

Next it’s time to beat on one of our favorite pet issues, Testing. We battle
our way out of the weeds of semantics and eventually come around to some more
practical talk around tools like Cucumber and Lettuce and what it means for suits and
geeks to collaborate to build functional specifications. (Please note that if
you’re driving a Ford Taurus, you might have left your lights on.)

From there, it’s a very quick descent into a passionate discussion of Python’s
tendency to spawn an explosion of “us too!” implementations of any shiny things
that we see in other languages and the resulting community fragmentation that
ensues, design by committee, and related perils. Dim memories of the dawn of
WSGI are recalled, Armin Ronacher’s Logbook is called out for being
new-instead-of-fixing, and snake-guice gets name checked. Mike Crute
implores erstwhile Python developers to look around for existing solutions (and
how to improve them) instead of building their own.

It’s then a hop-skip-and-a-jump over to templating engines like Mako, Jinja, Genshi, and Django templates, and then the
philosophical differences between various web frameworks. Are we better
pursuing unity of effort or diversity of ideas? Why does Ruby outdo Python at
“one and only one obvious way to do it” when it comes to major products? This
then spirals into ancient history of Rails and Python web frameworks and our
aesthetic feelings and pet peeves about Ruby.

We bring things back around into more practical territory as Chris asks Mike
Pirnat to expound fo a bit about Blogofile, a
static site/blog generator that Mike has recently become enamored with. (A few
corrections here–since recording, version 0.7 has escaped, and Chris, who
claims to be “chained to Wordpress” switched painlessly over to Blogofile in an
evening’s time.) We give a nice shout out to fellow Blogofile contributor
Morgan Goose and his awesome Fabric kung-fu.

And that’s pretty much it.

Big thanks again to the Buckeye Beer Engine for being so hospitable with their
space; they offer free wi-fi, a great selection of beers, and they have RSS
feeds for their tap list and
menu specials and other news. How awesome is that?

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next month with another installment–we
promise!

]]>None...or “Make Your Own Episode Title, Since You’re So Clever; I’m Tired and Going to Sleep Because Codemash Starts in Seven Hours” Broadcasting from high atop the basement of the Buckeye Beer Engine, regular voices Chris Miller, Mike Pirnat, David Stanek, Mike Crute, and Ben Smith are joined by Gary Bernhardt, renowned destroyer of software, for a conversational journey through what’s on our minds this week. (Audiophiles beware–thar be strange acoustics ahead!) First, we begin with an apology for not releasing an episode in six months; we make some excellent and terribly creative excuses, but still, we’re covered in a thick layer of fail. Forgive us? Getting down to business, we discuss WSGI2 and various issues around (what we perceive to be) the current community furor over its development. Do you know your PEP-3333 from your PEP-444? We try to sort it all out, and why we either like or don’t like bits of it, all the while haunted by the echoes of the room and the faint hints of bar...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes57:30Episode 006: PyOhio 2010http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/08/25/episode-006-pyohio-2010
Chris MillerWed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/08/25/episode-006-pyohio-2010Episode 006: PyOhio 2010

In this episode, as cast of thousands…okay, six…discuss the most recent PyOhio
conference.

We learn that Dave Stanek thinks that most of us (and by us, we mean you.
Yes, you.) are using decorators wrong. “Balderdash!” quoth the Stanek. “This is
all frumious nonsense!” Or something like that.

The debate over whether or not we should be adding new code to the Standard
library has been raised on certain mailing lists. Some feel that we need to add
new functionality because, as we like to say, the batteries are included.
However, others feel that adding things to the Standard Library is where code
goes to die, and that no major updates ever take place once this happens. What
do you think?

The ever-charming and sexy Mike Pirnat joins us to discuss a personal
revelation he’s had about the Zen of Python. We’re happy to take credit for
this.

We apologize for the sound quality on this one…you’ll see why when you
listen. Someone had to pack up his studio equipment this week.

]]>NoneIn this episode of From Python Import Podcast: We learn that Dave Stanek thinks that most of us (and by us, we mean you. Yes, you.) are using decorators wrong. “Balderdash!” quoth the Stanek. “This is all frumious nonsense!” Or something like that. The debate over whether or not we should be adding new code to the Standard library has been raised on certain mailing lists. Some feel that we need to add new functionality because, as we like to say, the batteries are included. However, others feel that adding things to the Standard Library is where code goes to die, and that no major updates ever take place once this happens. What do you think? The ever-charming and sexy Mike Pirnat joins us to discuss a personal revelation he’s had about the Zen of Python. We’re happy to take credit for this. We apologize for the sound quality on this one…you’ll see why when you listen. Someone had to pack up his studio equipment this week. Thanks for joining us. We welcome, nay, crave your thoughts...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes47:04New Episode Coming 6/15http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/06/10/new-episode-coming-6-15
Mike CruteThu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/06/10/new-episode-coming-6-15New Episode Coming 6/15

We’ve just recorded our next episode covering, well, you’ll just have to wait
an see. We’re very excited to have a special guest on the show
Mike Pirnat joins us to
share his thoughts
in a followup segment on the Zen of Python. Look for the new episode June 15th!

]]>NoneIn this episode, we continue our discussion of the Zen of Python.Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes36:07Episode 002: The Zen of Python, part 1http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/05/01/episode-002-the-zen-of-python-part-1
Chris MillerSat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/05/01/episode-002-the-zen-of-python-part-1Episode 002: The Zen of Python, part 1

This is the first of two episodes where we’re going to explore PEP 20, that is,
The Zen of Python.

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

]]>NoneThis is the first of two episodes where we’re going to explore PEP 20, that is, The Zen of Python. Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Flat is better than nested. Sparse is better than dense. Readability counts. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. Although practicality beats purity. Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. Now is better than never. Although never is often better than right now. If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those! Real show notes to follow. With links and everything.Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes1:00:00Now Available on iTuneshttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/04/17/now-available-on-itunes
Chris MillerSat, 17 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/04/17/now-available-on-itunesNow Available on iTunes

]]>NoneWelcome to the first episode of the podcast! These, my friends, are the Show Notes. Introduction to Your Hosts David Stanek @dstanek on Twitter Mike Crute @mcrute on Twitter Chris Miller @codeshaman on Twitter / codeshaman on Identi.ca PyCon 2010 Reflections Mike and Chris were impressed by the community and the group focus Ruby sucks. Mike said it. Bring it, kids. Titus likes Distribute and Pip. Who knows why? What can we learn from PyCon for regional conferences like PyOhio? Dave’s done a lot of thinking about testing He finds that nothing lets him test the way he wants. He uses nose, mock, and dingus Mote might be good for BDD, but Dave finds it lacking. Dave hates documentation. Tests could be like documentation, and would be more accurate over time. Mote parses the output more like a narrative, almost like a spec, instead of …..F…. We work with a large system, and rest assured, code is not documentation. Tests could be. Oh..we ramble about this for a while. PyCon...Mike Pirnat, David Noyes, Benjamin W. Smith, David Stanek, Mike Crute, Chris Milleryes40:13Coming Soon!http://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/03/26/coming-soon
Chris MillerFri, 26 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EDThttp://www.frompythonimportpodcast.com/2010/03/26/coming-soonComing Soon!Pardon our dust, beer cans, and old fast food bags. We’re in the process of
setting up the site for the new podcast. We recorded the first episode two days
ago, and thus far, we’re not thoroughly displeased with it.

Major renovations are coming this weekend, but the podcast looks as if it will
debut on 4/1/2010 as planned.